Researchers have demonstrated the ability to engineer materials that are both stiff and capable of insulating against heat. This combination of properties is extremely unusual and holds promise for a range of applications, such as the development of new thermal insulation coatings for electronic devices.
"Materials that have a high elastic modulus tend to also be highly thermally conductive, and vice versa," says Jun Liu, co-corresponding author of a paper on the work and an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at North Carolina State University."In other words, if a material is stiff, it does a good job of conducting heat. And if a material is not stiff, then it is usually good at insulating against heat.
Specifically, the researchers were working with a subset of the class of materials called two-dimensional hybrid organic-inorganic perovskites . "While discovering these materials in itself holds tremendous potential for a range of applications, as researchers we are particularly excited because we've identified the mechanism that is responsible for these characteristics -- namely the critical role that the benzene rings play," says Liu.
The researchers also discovered another interesting phenomenon with 2D HOIP materials. Specifically, they found that by introducing chirality into the organic layers -- i.e., making the carbon chains in those layers asymmetrical -- they could effectively maintain the same stiffness and thermal conductivity even when making substantial changes to the composition of the organic layers.
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